


I Bet My Life

by iblamethisonSherlock



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Canon Typical Violence, Canon compliant through HLV, Drug Use, F/M, Molly is a BAMF, Pre-Canon, a bit of angst, this is not as sad as these tags make it sound
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-05
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-07-12 12:29:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7103404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iblamethisonSherlock/pseuds/iblamethisonSherlock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by the song of the same name, but not a song fic per se. Sherlock has always been able to count on Molly to save him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vonPeeps (BoodleBrown)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=vonPeeps+%28BoodleBrown%29).



 

Sherlock can feel a prickle on the back of his neck that means Molly is watching him. He can feel _everything_ in this heightened state—the blood rushing through his veins, the thoughts racing through his mind, the energy buzzing through his body as if he is a tuning fork and The Work is the music that sets him to vibrating. All the colors are more vibrant—the whites of the equipment almost bright enough to hurt his eyes, the few bits of color in the sterile morgue nearly glowing, Looking more closely, he realizes that the discoloration on the victim’s skin is a stain from the dye she was using in making her boutique clothing. But why didn't her partner—and that’s when he remembers that she was the only one doing batik. “Oh, that’s it!” he exclaims, forgetting for a moment that he wasn’t looking at Molly and aiming a grin at her. Then he sees the concern on her face and remembers _why_ he hadn’t been looking at her. _Damn_. 

“Sherlock,” she starts hesitantly, “Are you alright?” 

He is texting Lestrade and tries to blow her off. “I’m _fine_ , Molly” Technically he isn’t lying to her. He is fine. He is _more than fin_ e. He is _fantastic_. “I’ll be upstairs.” He has several new ideas on experiments to run, none of which require staying in the morgue. _Fortunately_.

Twenty minutes later, Molly joins him upstairs and stares around at the mess he has made. Well, it can’t be helped—the three experiments he is running require all of the equipment and several boxes of slides. He is turning to go back to his favorite microscope ( _don’t be ridiculous, favorite implies sentiment_. No, he is simply used to the controls on this one) when she grabs his sleeve.” 

“Sherlock, look at me,” she says, “tell me what you’ve taken.” 

“It’s nothing to worry about, Molly” he says, and _of course_ , because everything in his life eventually goes to shit, this exact moment _would_ be the time the cocaine begins to wear off and the heroin he mixed with it to ease the comedown begins to kick in. In fact, it brings him down so quickly _(oh hell, that must have been stronger than I thought it was_ ) he feels as if he is moving in slow motion, and all the energy from before is running down the drain. 

“Oh Christ, Sherlock.” Molly is helping him to her office. He thinks that she seems to be holding up most of his weight. (For the first time, but certainly not the last, Sherlock thinks that Molly Hooper is deceptively strong.) She lets him sink onto the loveseat in her office. “Tell me what you’ve taken!” He can hear a tinge of panic, but honestly can’t muster the energy to do anything about that.

“The cocaine seems to have worn off, so I don’t think that’s a problem anymore,” he barely gets it out. 

“What **else** , Sherlock?” 

“Heroin,” he mumbles. 

“Oh Christ,” she repeats. She is watching him, uncertain what to do; then, “Wait here.” 

As if he could do anything else.

He is fighting the black at the edges of his vision, darker and more all-encompassing than he’s ever seen before, when he hears her open the door. She rolls up his sleeve (he can hear her sharp intake of breath at the track marks there) and injects something into his arm. _Why would Molly be giving me more drugs_?, he has time to question. The shadows at the edges now seem to be taking forms. He wonders if he was wrong, if there was in fact a Grim Reaper and this is what he looks like, when suddenly the figures, the darkness itself, disappears and he is wide awake and gasping. “What—what on earth was that? That you gave me?” he asks. 

“Narcan,” she states, matter-of-factly. “I can get more, if you end up needing it.” She is putting on a brave face but he can feel the slight tremble in her hands. 

“Are you going to call my brother?” he challenges her. 

“Do you want me to? Is his number in your phone?” 

“No, absolutely **not** ,” he says. _Interesting_. Did Mycroft not contact her? There was no guile in the last question—she doesn’t have Mycroft’s contact numbers. 

“Do you want me to call someone else then?” 

“No, no one else.” There _is_ no one else. He decides he might as well lie here on the couch in her office. It’s not as though he has anywhere particularly pressing to go.

She has him wait in her office for an hour, watching him like a hawk, before she allows him to call a cab and head back to his little flat on Montague Street. She doesn’t say, “Please don’t do this again. Don’t do this to yourself,” though he can tell she’s thinking it. He makes no promises to her, so that if he fails he won’t have broken any. He tells himself that this will be the last time, but that is a promise to himself that he has broken before.

He really tries this time. He does. He even makes it through the cold sweats and the aching and the chills. Then, of course, he is irritable, and he says something to Lestrade beyond even the patient man’s ability to tolerate. Without the promise of The Work, he takes to wandering the streets of London to avoid staring at the same four walls of his tiny flat. He tells himself it’s so he can update his mental map of London. He tells himself that right up until he finds his dealer.

The next time he is in the lab after that, he can feel Molly’s eyes on him again. Once again, he forgets why he is avoiding her gaze, and through the haze he can still see the hurt and worry (but not pity) when she confirms what he has done. Even though he had been careful to make her no promises, something painful twists inside him that he had broken it. 

“Sherlock, are you alright?” 

”I’m _fine_ , Molly” he answers. This time he slips out of the hospital before she can intervene. Later that night, he calls a number he swore he would never call again. Mycroft’s car pulls up next to him at the curb.

“So, brother mine, are you ready to make rehab stick this time? The fact that you called instead of me having to section you is quite hopeful, at least.”

After a long silence, Mycroft asks “Why now?” Sherlock doesn’t answer him. Molly doesn’t even know about his not-promise, it’s certainly none of Mycroft’s business.

Sherlock also refuses to talk about **why** when they ask him in rehab. He insists to them—to himself—he has deleted it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a note, a changed the summary a bit to better reflect where this story is going.

 

The Fall

Only one thing he needs to complete his plan….the words are echoing in his head. Of course. Stupid. Moriarty has a death wish—he just isn’t planning on going alone. “There’s something I need to do” he tells John.

“Can I help?”

“No. On my own.”

He skirts the areas with security cameras, taking the back alleys to St Barts, having long practice in avoiding Mycroft’s eyes back when he was using. After all, it’s much too late to try to contact Mycroft now. He has no doubt that Moriarty has tapped his phone and hacked his email—child’s play compared to sneaking a camera into his flat. Using them now would throw the entire plan into chaos. He has already ruined one of Mycroft’s international spy games (and he knows accessing the information on that phone doesn’t make up for it, no matter what he said at the time). If it comes down to it, if there were no other way out, he would rather actually die taking down Moriarty than wind up in some MI6 cell. But Molly had offered her help—no, not just help, _her_ , willing to risk anything to save him yet again, even if she had no idea she’d done it before.

Waiting in the darkened lab, he contemplates what he is asking Molly to do, still stunned that she had offered her help, despite everything he’d done, every harsh word he’d ever spoken. He has been pushing everyone away while playing Mycroft’s game, but it hurts to think he has given Molly reason to believe that he values her so little. So before anything else, he has to make sure she knows, absolutely and without doubt, what she means to him. Not only now, when the stakes are so high, but for everything—the experiments when he was so bored he thought he would go mad, for the fact that she didn’t throw him out of her lab (and her life) long ago. He certainly would have deserved it. For the thing he has been trying not to admit to himself for six years now, and realizes that this, this is why he has been pushing her away, trying to ignore his feelings for her so long. Owing someone his entire life was a debt he wasn’t comfortable with acknowledging. And yet here he is again, this time with her full knowledge.

He asks Molly if she is certain, if she is still willing to help if he is not the person she thought he was—if he is working as a spy; if he is not clever enough to get out of this on his own; if he has to lie to everyone he cares about (except Molly)—if _she_ has to lie to everyone. He is putting her own life in danger from a vast criminal network even as he is aiming to take it down. And Molly takes the risk, puts her job and her safety on the line. Because she is Molly. She has _always_ been able to see him, since the beginning.

He asks her, in the pre-dawn twilight, when everything that can be planned has been done, and they are just waiting to set it al in motion,

“Why?”

At that she looks down, but then faces him with the same bravery she had mustered yesterday, “You know why, Sherlock.”

He leaves it at that. He does know. He just doesn’t understand why _him_.

On the rooftop, when Moriarty is making him list off the names of his friends, his heart is in his throat, afraid that he will have to say the word Molly, but Moriarty stops him with “Three gunmen, three bullets.” As horrified as he is at Moriarty’s plan, as terrified as he is for John and Mrs Hudson and Lestrade (and he will do whatever he has to do to save their lives), the sense of relief that Molly’s name was not on the list, that their plan has a chance to work,nearly makes him weak. When Moriarty kills himself and there is no backing out, he stands on the ledge and tips over. Despite the fear and vertigo and the strange swooshing sensation in his stomach, he has no doubts about Molly’s ability to catch him.

Afterwards, when he is still shaking from the adrenaline, he leans on her as she is gently washing the fake blood from his face. He thinks that she is stronger than anyone gives her credit for, and then has a sense of deja vu at the thought.

“I think we’re going to have to wash your hair in the sink.” she says.

“Hmm, I suppose it would be a bit conspicuous, wouldn’t it?’

She is trying to smile through the sheen of tears in her eyes. “Yes, a bit.”

When he is clean, and in clothes that look nothing like his own, while he is waiting for his brother’s men—once Moriarty was dead and he knew for certain that Molly had flown below his radar, shhare was able to contact Mycroft—he pulls Molly in and just holds her close for a while. She seems to understand it is _thank you_ and _goodbye_ and _I know how_   _hard this is going to be_  all in one gesture. Hers says _Be_ _safe_ and _come back to us_ in return. Then the car is there and there is no more time to say anything at all, even if he knew how.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This may not match up with either the show or your theory of how The Fall went, and that;s okay. This is just one theory out of many. 
> 
> Also, I changed the number of chapters in this work cause I can;t count, duh. (My math is even worse than you'd excpect from an English major)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where the canon-typical (or possibly slightly more than canon-typical) violence cines in. I hope you'll read this chapter as there's more to it than just the violence, but if you want to opt out of this one, I understand.

Sherlock is crouched down in a ditch, of all things, hiding from some Russian drug dealers who had gotten suspicious when he was found trying to hack into some information about their chain of command. He really is lucky the man is such a poor shot. He isn’t going to be lucky for much longer, however, if he keeps trying to hide out in the open like this. He crawls along the ditch until he finds the tunnel the runoff ss draining into and half crouched-half crawls his way through. He comes out the other side five streets away and makes his way through a maze of alleys, hoping his disheveled appearance will be chalked up as just another homeless wanderer on the streets. People tend to purposely not notice the homeless, a fact that had made his network back home so valuable. He soon finds his way to a bolthole he had kept in reserve in this city, slipping in the door.

He makes his way to the far corner of the tiny room that is little more than a concrete bunker with a cot and water facilities. It might as well be a jail cell. He pries a chunk of concrete out of the cracked wall. Hiding inside is a plastic envelope with a passport in a new name and cash in varying currencies. Tucked under the thin mattress is a change of clothes. He takes all of it into the tiny bathroom with him. As he is cleaning the muck off himself, he realizes he has never felt this bone tired before, not even the time he stayed awake for a week for a case. He takes his old identification and scrapes the plastic off as best he can, and then burns what’s left by holding the corner in the flame of the candle as he smokes his cigarette. He has begun to wish for something stronger than the cigarette, but that won’t help him get to the next city. He is sick of it—sick of the running and the hiding and never trusting anyone. He never thought he’d say that, he imagined it would be like The Work at home. Home. Did he even have one of those anymore? Everyone already thought him dead—if he disappeared, then Mycroft would be annoyed at having to send another agent to finish taking down the rest of the network, but really, that would only be an inconvenience, and he really isn’t very concerned with Mycroft’s convenience right now. After all, it was MI6 and Mycroft’s plan that had destroyed his entire life, who were they to complain if he finished the job? At the last contact he’d had with Mycroft, all of his friends had been fine, surely they were safe now from Moriarty’s threats (he had, of course, made sure those agents in London had been neutralized before he left), In fact, they were all probably safer if he never came back, left them to live their own lives without him.

As he is putting on his clean clothes, he hears a rush of footstep, and the flimsy door crashes in (it had been the weakest spot in this place that was the closest to a bunker that he’d ever been in). The two men he thought he had lost in the maze of the city are here. Sherlock dives for the bed, and shoots from behind the flimsy protection the upended mattress provides. He neutralizes the gunman first. They hadn’t been expecting him to be armed as well, and he takes advantage of the split second of surprise on the part of the one with the shaved head to incapacitate him with a shoulder shot, running over to kick the gun that the dead man had dropped out of his reach. Aiming at the center of the man’s forehead, he says, “You might have a chance to live if I call for emergency services within the next 4 minutes. Now talk.”

The man babbles something incoherent, out of which he only gets the word “Please.”

“Three minutes. Information on your chain of command. Now.”

Unfortunately, shaved head really has nothing that he hadn’t figured out himself. Sherlock watches him fade, and can’t help but notice the second he catches on that no call to emergency services has been made. The man’s lips form the words, “Fuck you” but he has no air left to make any sound. Having decided it’s no longer safe in this city, Sherlock sends the extraction code on his burner phone that he was only to use in emergencies. Once he gets a reply back, he adds, and bring a clean shirt.

With the adrenaline cooling in his blood, he looks at the bodies and wonders when exactly he had truly become one of Mycroft’s agents. Was it when he had jumped off a building? Had his course been irreversible from that moment? Or was it the first time he had killed anyone in something other than self defense?

Weeks later, in yet another bolthole, in yet another country, he lays back on his worn sleeping bag, lighting another cigarette from the end of the last. He checks his wallet to see exactly how much cash he has in a currency that won’t draw undue attention and instead pulls out the St Christopher’s medal. Molly had slipped it into his coat pocket unbeknownst to him as he was leaving after his faked suicide. He hadn’t discovered it until an hour later. It was old, and somewhat worn. Obviously a gift from family—not her father, perhaps her grandmother. He hadn’t known, at first, why she had given him something so precious to her that she would have it on her person on a daily basis. (She had known he wasn’t alright, but she could hardly have known what he would ask her to do, or that he would have to leave so suddenly.) Slowly he came to realize that this was a continuation of that silent message in her embrace, not just be safe but also come back to us. She had taken the chance that she would never see this symbol of her family again, had taken a chance on him, hoping for an unspoken promise that he would return. He holds the medal up by the chain, and lets it swing back and forth in the candlelight, watching it glow and then swing back into darkness. He thinks of another not-promise to her that he had kept six years ago, and stubs out his cigarette.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a headcanon of mine that Molly was raised Catholic--and retains just enough that even though she doesn't go to Mass anymore, she'd feel that a St Christopher's medal at the very least couldn't hurt (and if part of her feels that it could help, well...)


End file.
